The present invention relates generally to outdoor cabinets where fiber optic connections can be made to customers of high-speed data services. More particularly, the present invention relates to an improved outdoor cabinet in which signals from feeder cables are split and distributed to the respective customers.
The ability of high-quality optical fiber to transmit large amounts of information without appreciable signal degradation is well known. As a result, optical fibers have found widespread use in many applications, such as voice and data transmission. Initially, optical fiber was often limited to such uses as trunk line communications or commercial settings requiring high rates of data throughput. More recently, however, the need for greater bandwidth in residential settings has brought optical fibers directly into homes and other premises.
Typically, information is fed from a central office of the data service provider using feeder cables made up of multiple optical fibers. For example, a typical feeder cable may have 12, 24, 36 or 48 individual optical fibers, each of which is capable of carrying a tremendous amount of information. While some customers may require all of the bandwidth provided by one of the optical fibers in the feeder cable, most subscribers (e.g., residential subscribers) do not. Instead, each of these feeder fibers may be distributed to a number of individual subscribers using an optical fiber splitter. It will be appreciated that the data service provider often needs to connect or disconnect service to customers in a given area. Specifically, all premises in the area equipped with optical fiber to the premises may not desire the data service at a certain point in time.
Most US-based passive optical network (PON) systems use a fiber distribution hub and a fiber distribution hub splitter. Although this technology generally meets service provider network requirements, the typical fiber distribution hub and fiber distribution hub splitters use proprietary splitters, a fixed internal cabling methodology and are difficult to service.
The present invention recognizes the foregoing considerations, and others, of the prior art.